With GOP leadership drifting, Dems go on attack ...
Can Democrats win back the moral high ground?

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette

April 23, 2006 - The main speakers at Saturday's Democratic rally and picnic invoked common themes that included party unity and becoming the party of character, integrity and values.

Democrats Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller and state legislators Sen. Dan Mongiardo and Rep. Mike Weaver told picnic-goers it's time to fight the GOP's label as the party of morals and values.

It's an admirable goal, and one that the party might be able to make some headway with on some levels here in Kentucky.

The truth is that Kentucky Democrats are generally more conservative than the national Democrats. It's not uncommon to hear Democrats on the local level espousing political ideas that sound amazingly conservative -- that's not an accusation, but an observation from someone whose been a conservative Kentucky Democrat for nearly many years.

Can the Democrats steal an issue that's so tightly integrated into the fabric of the Republican Party? They might, if they take a lesson from the master of reinventing himself, President William Jefferson Clinton.

During his years in office, Clinton successfully cast (and recast) himself as a moderate Democrat in tune with the average American's values. He frequently spoke of social and culture issues as a moderate, though he didn't support or offer legislation to support very many of these stances. He wasn't the first politician to do this, but he did it very, very well (after all, he earned the nickname "Slick Willie" for a reason).

When the Republican revolution hit Congress, Clinton successfully portions of the GOP's agenda, including welfare reform and education. Clinton promoted himself as a reformer and at least to the public, made the GOP's issues his own.

I believe what the Democrats are still dealing with (in the arena of "values") is the Clinton legacy. Though he's been out of office for more than six years, the stain of Clinton's impact on his party still lingers. Clinton's lies to the American people -- even about as trivial a matter as an extramarital affair -- damaged his reputation and wounded his party.

In short, the term "family values" rang a bit hollow from the lips of a philandering and impeached-but-not-removed-from-office president. I'm just funny like that, I guess.

A decade later, will Democrats steal the GOP's thunder on family values and moral character issues?

They might.

One of my political science professors explained that the political "center" in American politics is an ever-changing point that swings like a pendulum across the political spectrum.

The political center tends to move in a cycle, she explained. It will move more conservative right and then shift back later toward to the liberal left.

As it stands now, the political center is decidedly in conservative territory; I offer the fact that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the executive branch as proof.

With the President's approval rating in the tank and an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, the political center may start its swing toward the liberal end of the scale in the mid-term elections this year.

The real question that the polls don't answer is this: Even if you don't approve of Bush or the GOP's handling of recent issues, would you elect a liberal to replace him? Will Red State voters abandon the GOP?

Some might.

But there's another factor that may soften the impact of the president's disapproval rating or even the stench of Republican lawmakers' ethics violations: Let's call them "cultural issues."

The Democratic party has tried to please too many fringe and special interest group agendas: radical feminists and the pro-abortion lobby, the militant gay rights community, the environmental wackos and the list goes on.

These groups are outside the cultural norms of mainstream America -- the Red State voters -- and I believe it helped defeat Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid.

Democrats across the country will hope to turn the GOP's perceived recent shortcomings into political hay, and frankly, I wouldn't expect them not to. I'm not sure how well the strategy will work in Kentucky, but it's going to make for interesting politics.

State Rep. Mike Weaver spoke strongly at Saturday's picnic of faith, family values and of his service to his country.

With the support of both the state and national Democratic parties, Weaver's campaign looks to be both well organized and financed. However Weaver faces an well-entrenched incumbent who has steered clear of political land mines and has been strongly supported in each election by a state that is predominantly Democratic.

Weaver is the strongest candidate to face Lewis since Lewis won the special election for Democrat Bill Natcher's Second District Congressional seat in 1994.

Can Weaver use the president's falling popularity to help unseat Lewis? It's an uphill climb, and one that Weaver seems to be tackling a rung at a time.